Dan Black

Defender Michael Keane believes the trip to the New York Stadium to take on lowly Rotherham United is a tough fixture to gauge.

The Millers recently parted company with manager Steve Evans despite climbing out of the Championship’s bottom three with successive victories over Cardiff and Birmingham.

First team coach Eric Black, formerly Steve Kean’s assistant at Blackburn Rovers, has taken command on a temporary basis until the club appoints a permanent successor.

And the 22-year-old believes that an upturn in form coupled with a switch in personnel at the helm makes tomorrow evening’s opponents relatively unquantifiable.

“I think it’s going to be a tough game because they’re going in to it off some good results,” he said. “Obviously the manager has left for one reason or another and sometimes that can fire up the crowd and it can get the players going. We’re expecting a tough game.

“We’ll analyse how they play but you never know what to expect when a new manager comes in. It’s one of them where you might just have to adapt on the night. I’m confident if we’re up for the fight and play well then we’ll have too much for them.

“We’ve done what we’ve done all season in training. We’re all disappointed with the result against Reading but apart from the first 10 minutes I thought we played well. We’ve trained really well this week, really hard, and we’re ready for the game.”

The Clarets leading scorer, who has three goals to his name so far, is backing the strikers to start doing the business soon as boss Sean Dyche settles on a preferred force. Five different partnerships have already been tested this year, and now Andre Gray, Sam Vokes, Rouwen Hennings and Chris Long are all vying for selection.

“I’m happy being top scorer,” he said. “I’ve not scored for a few games now so I’ve had a bit of a drought but hopefully I can get on the end of one. It’s good that we can score goals from all areas. There’s not just me - Ben Mee’s got a goal and Tendayi scored one at the weekend.

“The strikers have a few goals but it’s been chopped and changed quite a bit. I think it might help once we can settle down but we’ve had a few injuries and with the transfer window there’s been people going in and out. I think they’ll all start to hit the ground running soon and once they score a couple of goals they’ll start getting a few more.”

Joey Barton made his Clarets debut in the reversal against the Royals at Turf Moor, replacing Michael Kightly in the 56th minute, and the former Manchester City midfielder could be in line to make his first start tonight.

“He’s been brilliant since he came in,” said Keane. “He’s a great person to have around the changing room - always making people laugh - and he’s a great talker on the pitch as well. He’s got a lot of experience and we’re really happy to have him here. If he plays then I’m sure he’ll do a good job.”